Personal identity and mental time travel

Abstract

This paper examines the role of episodic memory, and the broader notion of “mental time travel” (MTT), in constituting personal identity. After arguing that the construal of memory’s role in personal identity found in traditional psychological continuity theories of personal identity is both unrealistic and unsatisfying, the paper endeavors to provide a better account. This begins with recent work in the science and philosophy of memory that sees episodic memory as part of a broader faculty for MTT (which also involves imagination and counterfactual thought). Some of the basic ideas expressed in this work are developed into an account of the connection between MTT with “strong identification” and personal identity. According to this alternative approach, we regularly “borrow affect” from our pasts and futures through forms of remembering, imagining, and counterfactual thinking that involve a particular form of identification with our past and future selves. This activity generates a strong diachronic experience of self, which contributes in important ways to diachronic personal identity. The sense of self generated through MTT is, however, only one piece of a more comprehensive account of personal identity. The paper concludes by describing its place in the larger picture.